A couple of questions on morale

[fruitfly]

I've been wondering a bit lately about morale penalties and the affect they have on both your units and the enemy ones.

I know that if a unit loses even a single man to an attack from a gunpowder unit, they suffer a massive morale penalty as a result, but does this last for the remainder of the battle or only for as long as the arrow symbol would be flashing on their icon? If it's the entire battle, it'd make sense to have a couple of demi-culverins or other cannons when defending just to hammer the morale of the advancing enemy even though you won't inflict many casualties. Then you could withdraw them when the enemy get close and bring on a couple of light cavalry as reinforcements to chase down routers.

I assume that the morale penalties for being flanked or having an enemy unit behind them, and for being under arrow fire only last for as long as the threat remains. Is that right? Also, it'd make sense if the morale boost from having the general nearby only lasted for as long as his unit was sufficiently close to be supporting those particular troops, which I guess must be what happens.

Basically, I suppose I'm wondering how long the various morale boosts and penalties last during a battle so I can figure out which are likely to have the biggest impact.

One last thing on morale... when you press F1 during a battle and the screen displays the basic stats of your units and their morale, is it always fixed as their starting morale, or does it change to reflect the morale of the unit at the time?

[Puzz3D]

The morale penalty for suffering a casualty from ranged fire lasts as log as the icon of the unit is flashing red. The length of time is related to the reload time of the weapon that caused the casualty. The longer the reload time, the longer the penalty lasts. There is another dynamic morale penalty for suffering a casualty in melee and these will add up if casualties are occuring at a high rate. There is no indicator for this effect other than the text status info of wavering, uncertain, steady and impetuous which is a summation of all the morale effects. This morale penalty for a melee casualty goes away after a peroid of time, but I don't know how long that is. There are fixed (permanent) morale penalties for certain levels of decimation. At 10% loss of men it's -2, at 50% it's -8 and at 80% it's -12. The only other dymanic morale penalty I can think of is the death of the general. It's -8 for the first few seconds after he dies, and then it drops to -2, and that effect has a universal effect on all units. All the other morale penalties I can think of, except the one for fatigue, are static effects due to position of the unit relative to other units and have a limited range. If a unit is in range, it feels the effect, and, if it moves out of range, it doesn't feel it. That range is usually a radial distance of 1.8 tiles, but some effects might have a shorter range.

F1 shows the starting morale level of each unit, and it is not updated during the battle.

[fruitfly]

Thanks Puzz3D.